Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I know these guys are attracted to the front door light and my bug zapper had dropped so many of them to the perch year before last that the wings would stop up the pump. I knew there are plenty starting in May and peaking in June. To the point most people called them June bugs. Check out this trap!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srfZYFTn ... re=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKvSW9oQ ... re=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lY9vuFVc3FU
I'm thinking chicken food to the max!

While june bugs are japanese beetles they are not the japanese beetles from the vids. The June bugs emerge at night while regular japanese beetles emerge during day. Louisiana doesn't have them and I guess I should be grateful But we do have the other pesky critters.
http://www.inspection.gc.ca/english/pla ... scae.shtml

Sounds like the japanses ones can be pretty damaging to crops.

Ya - almost june bug season here. Before mom moved up north should would collect them in a jar in the evening while drinking coffee outside and then in the morning put them in the bird feeders.

Bill - you got that nasty green pollen all over everything now - or is it just us here in texas?

We get the Japanese Beetles up north during the summer too. They mostly destroy my sunflowers, beans, raspberries, and blueberries. The traps work....but.... make sure you set them up far away from your gardens. The scent is so strong it attracts them in from far distances. Some people feel you're better off not using them since they feel it attract them too much.

I've been fairly successful sucking them off with a dust buster. I just poke around the garden each day for a few minutes suck them off the leaves, then dump them in a bucket of water.

I will put a light out for the chickens to get a little extra protein. It was a lot of trouble with the bug zapper over the ap with a little fountain pump but the blue gill loved them. Spit out the wings though.

Yep my live oak is starting, that one bothers me some. I have a lot of big pines that will turn the vehicles yellow. They haven't start yet but they are not nearly as irritating to the sinus.

I count myself lucky that we don't get such monstrosities here in the UK. But then again, it's kind of hard for us to get insect based food for fish.

My parents breed Koi (they're one of the few people who have actually been able to export their fish back to Japan!) and they used moth lights to attract insects at night over the house pool. We also used to have a very fine meshed net, kind of like a giant butterfly net, which we waved over the pools to catch the midges.

But those beetles look ideal candidates for fish food if you ask me.

A dust buster is a gardener's best friend! I use it for the stink bugs on the tomatos and bell peppers.

Does that work for aphids too? Aphids tend to be harder to shift off the stems of plants. Black Fly, Green Fly and aphids are the main source of irritation for UK growers. Liberal amounts of Ladybirds work as a deterrent, but even they can't eat fast enough to keep up with the rate which these grow at.

aphrid=stink bug

to get them off the toms, I get a small container of water, put it under them and then just tap the leaf around them. Disturb them enough and they jump off into the water.

Definitely not. These guys put off a stink when disturbed right before they take flight and are about half the size of a penny.
http://www.uky.edu/Ag/CritterFiles/case ... nkbugs.htm
Aphids are hard to deal with in AP. Several threads on the subject with different concoctions for control.

I know that are smaller, but figured they were the same family as they look the same.

Aphids are really wicked as to the ways they can reproduce. Normal life cycle egg nymph adult egg... and egg nymph cloned nymph cloned nymph cloned nymph...
http://www.backyardnature.net/aphid_lc.htm